<p>Sorry, I am in a downer mood today. Didn't mean to spoil the fun.</p>
<p>shyanne- There are LOTS of hard working kids who still drink 3 or 4 nights a week. My son's Ivy is full of them. They didn't get to that school by not working hard, and they don't stay there by not working hard. That doesn't change the amount of drinking and partying. Yes, there are kids who shun such foolish pursuits, but a lot less than the parents on this forum would have us believe.</p>
<p>Gotta love Thirsty Thursday. Start the weekend off right!</p>
<p>When they come out with a study proving that college drinking = future failure, then I will care more.</p>
<p>Count one for objection #2</p>
<p>Mosey over to the Vandy Culture thread to see of which I speak. Oy.</p>
<p>So, seriously, does alcohol play such a massive role in Canada as in the US? Any Canadians here?</p>
<p>My son is taking two classes that meet on Fridays (as well as other days of the week) at a Big Ten university. He also has a class that meets on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. He lives on campus. I've seen him on various weekday evenings and at various hours of the day throughout the weekend hours to take him to the college information sessions he visits. I don't see any drunk students at his dorm--which is meant to be substance free--and I hear that his dorm is reputed to be the "boring" dorm. There seem to be a lot of hard-working students where he stays who decline to get drunk and attend to their studies.</p>
<p>At NU I believe Wed night was big for parties and such.</p>
<p>My son has had a Thursday evening class. They don't usually go out until about 10 anyway.<br>
It seems like when I was at my Big Ten school back in the day we were more random about the drinking nights. If someone turned 21, even if it was a Monday, out we went! </p>
<p>I am not condoning all this drinking. It concerns me a great deal. However, I think it is important to resist the temptation to assume that all the drinkers are weaker students who don't care about their grades or classes. Not the case. I can attest to that even from my law school days.</p>
<p>i am from canada and i can offer some insight</p>
<p>Canadian colleges have a bit of a different lifestyle... the dorm living, big party scene is not really big here. The schools here are pretty huge because they are public i guess. So students living in the dorms may go out drinking on weekends but i doubt its 4 nights a week. Western is known as out party school where there is apparently a lot of drinking. However Mc Gill, U of T, and UBC do not really have these reputations.</p>
<p>U of Toronto has lots of bars in neighborhoods to the north, east, and west of it that students go to. Also some on-campus pubs. I got a master's degree there, and there was lots of drinking, though it was by no means mandatory...and the beer was pretty expensive compared to the US, and you can only buy it in special government-run stores. I lived across the street from a frat, and when they went on a beer run, they'd have a van full of cases of beer and a "chain" of guys would pass the beer into the house in a very efficient and organized manner.</p>
<p>The difference between U.S and Canadian schools in terms of drinking is mainly where the drinking is done. In Canada, there are less dorm parties (none after first year) and more house parties (keggers) and more drinking done at bars, as our drinking age is 19, and alost everyone had a fake ID in first year. At Mcgill, its almost all at the bars beacause the drinking age is 18 in Montreal. I went to the University of Western Ontario, which has a reputation of being a big party school. We went to the bars/got drunk on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Sundays were the main day for doing any work. Now that's not to say every kid at Western or a Canadian university is like that, but a fair amount definitely are. </p>
<p>Also, even though Western's frosh week was a "dry" week ( meaning students would get written up if found with alcohol/drunk, I know 7 kids who went to the hospital with alcohol poisoning that week. So yeah, there's definitely the binge drinking culture in Canadian uni's</p>
<p>Question for the Canadians posting here:</p>
<p>Some U.S. college presidents are now calling for lowering the drinking age as a tactic to oppose excessive drinking/binge drinking. To some this seems counterintuitive. But some of your comments seem to suggest that the lower drinking age in Canada and easy access to alcohol at off-campus bars results in fewer big blowout parties at Canadian universities---possibly supporting the presidents' call for a lower drinking age. What do you think? Does the lower drinking age contribute to less drinking overall, and/or less binge drinking?</p>
<p>From the Canadians I was friends with in college they said the phase US kids go through at college tends to happen for them a little younger. Also, the Canadians didn't seem to have a problem with going to parties and getting hammered along with everyone else.</p>
<p>At my top 10 school, I would say 25% of the kids drink 4 nights a week and about 50-60% of the overall student body drinks at least twice a week. About 40% of the student population doesn't drink at all.</p>
<p>Partying has almost no correlation with your grades in the top universities. That's why the Greek kids in most colleges have higher GPAs than independents. It's not like the kids who don't party on Friday or Saturday night are studying...they are most likely playing videogames or boardgames or wasting time in some manner.</p>
<p>Personally, I would much rather go out and drink, meet new people, socialize, make connections and hook up with drunk girls. I feel like that's more productive than anything you could be doing in college besides studying and research.</p>
<p>So, why exactly is the party culture frowned upon again? It helps you get jobs. I promise!;)</p>
<p>Sigh. Probably best to let this thread die.</p>